


Haunting

by bluebeholder



Series: Amends With Shadows [3]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Backstory, Corvo Is Bad At Feelings, Hugs, M/M, The Outsider Is Bad At Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 10:52:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12274911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: After a month or more of radio silence from the Outsider, Corvo finally gets his attention.There are revelations.





	Haunting

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand the next entry to the saga. Yes, this is a direct follow-on from "Stories", though you don't have to have read that to get the gist of this...they're both awful at feelings and communication. What do we do with them? *shakes head*
> 
> Thanks again to adrift_me, who is coaxing me through knowing _fuck-all_ about Dishonored except that Grumpy Rat Dad and Void Son belong together. You're a life-saver, darling.  <3

Since that conversation on the rooftop, Corvo hasn’t seen the Outsider once.

It’s frankly unnerving. 

He’s used to having the Outsider hanging over his shoulder every five minutes. Always asking questions, talking in riddles. Frightening, at first; then merely strange; and now endearing and familiar. The Outsider is still touchy, proud, and arrogant--but those flaws can be excused, when the person who bears them is a god. 

Not seeing the Outsider is making Corvo unaccountably nervous. He’s a god, he can’t be hurt, but Corvo is beginning to wonder if he’s bored. If Corvo has become a disappointment. But he’s still got the Mark on his hand. He waits in uncertainty. 

Days pass, and then weeks, and Corvo starts jumping at shadows. He finds himself missing the Outsider, yearning for his presence. It’s strange and frightening and Corvo isn’t even sure where to start. He doesn’t pray, exactly, in that he doesn’t get down on his knees. He only dreams of the Outsider, thinks of him when he’s alone, occasionally swears at him--demanding that the black-eyed bastard show himself. 

In a hidden room in a wrecked building deep in what had been the Flooded District, Corvo finds a small shrine. Despite the fact that it’s clearly been long abandoned, the shrine is intact. It’s still shrouded in purple fabric, offerings laid reverently upon it, a place where someone came to plead for help to ears that did not listen. 

Out of some instinct he doesn’t quite understand, Corvo lights the candles. The wicks flare up immediately, casting the whole room in a faint golden glow. The walls are canted to one side, the wood slowly falling apart from neglect and water damage. The door, half off its hinges, hangs open to reveal only darkness behind him. There’s the smell of seawater, of rotting wood, of rust and wet stone. This is exactly the kind of place that the Outsider would usually grace with his presence. Yet still he isn’t here.

“Why ignore them and pay attention to me?” Corvo mutters, grazing his fingertips over the top of the altar. “I don’t understand you. Why me? And why abandon me now?”

“Will you never let me go?” 

The voice is so sudden that Corvo flinches. He turns and the Outsider is there, eyes black as night, hanging suspended in a cloud of Void-stuff. “You’re back.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you go?”

The Outsider’s expression changes slightly. He looks, if Corvo didn’t know better, afraid. “I need give no explanation.”

“I think you owe me one,” Corvo dares to say. The Outsider doesn’t move an inch but the hostility in the room is so thick that Corvo could cut it. “You abandoned me. And I don’t think I was boring you.”

“You are correct,” the Outsider says. He moves forward, so he’s within arm’s reach of Corvo. “I was not bored, and that is exactly why I left.”

“I...what?”

The Outsider practically spits out the words. “You’re too fascinating.”

Something about this does not add up.

“I don’t understand.”

“Truly? Will you play at ignorance?” the Outsider says. He’s so close that Corvo could kiss him, that he could break Corvo’s neck. “Very well. I have not felt anything in  _ centuries _ . And then you, Corvo Attano, you walked out of Coldridge Prison. I thought nothing of you. I gave you my Mark because I thought you were interesting, but no more so than any other mortal.”

“Did that change?”

“You changed me,” the Outsider says. For once, Corvo can tell exactly where he’s looking, that their eyes have truly met. “ _ You _ . You maddening, infuriating man. You made me ask questions. In the fifteen years since we met--did you notice that I had changed? That I spoke differently, more like a mortal man?”

Corvo nods slightly, not wanting to break eye contact even if he’s beginning to shiver with tension. “I noticed.”

“Your doing,” the Outsider says. “Yours. A mortal man, changing a god. How interesting.”

“I didn’t intend it.”

The Outsider laughs. Harsh, bitter laughter, as cold as wind driving snow. “Another thing that fascinates. You don’t mean it. You don’t pray, you don’t beg. You just-- _ watch _ . You watch as I watch, as if you had centuries to wait.”

And then between one blink and the next he’s behind Corvo, so close now that he’s speaking against the back of Corvo’s neck, not quite touching. Corvo stands very still, and waits. He feels like he’s standing in a storm at sea, battered by waves and lashed by wind, and that if he can only wait long enough he’ll break into the eye of the storm, and see things clearly. 

“I have watched you age,” the Outsider says. “Your hair turns gray, your body grows weaker.”

“It happens.”

A pause, and then, “I never thought it would happen to you.”

Corvo stares, wide-eyed, at the shrine. 

A hand slips into his, fine and slender and cold. “I forgot that you were just like every other person I’ve ever Marked. I  _ worry  _ for you. I want your attention. I want your time. I listen when you pray at shrines, when you curse me in the dark. I’ve let you do everything you wanted and more. I let you worship me with your  _ body  _ and what’s worse than that is that I  _ enjoyed it _ .”

“You said you’d let people do that before.”

The Outsider hisses a little. “I never  _ wanted _ it before. I wanted  _ you _ .”

Oh. 

“Are you afraid?” Corvo asks, turning his head just enough that he can see the Outsider in his periphery. 

“You should be the one afraid,” the Outsider says. He’s still not moving. 

“I  _ am _ afraid of you, sometimes,” Corvo says. He’s never been one for the idea of confession, but now seems a good moment. “But I don’t care for you any less, because of it.”

There’s a sound from behind him, a sound that Corvo might call a sob if it were a human making it, a wrenched and broken thing. “ _ Why do you care about me _ !? No one cared about me when I was mortal, and no one has cared since I’ve been in the Void, and that is  _ right _ . I’m a  _ god _ , I don’t need someone to  _ care _ .”

Corvo isn’t sure what to say to that. “Need isn’t the same as want,” he finally says. 

Absolute stillness and silence is his only answer. 

“I won’t ask anything of you,” Corvo says, watching their shadows dance on the crooked wall. “But. If you want me, you have me.”

“I can’t have favorites,” the Outsider whispers. Corvo feels his head come to rest against his back, a terrifying gesture of vulnerability. “If I could...you would be mine.”

The silence is so absolute that Corvo expects it to shatter like glass. His ears are ringing as he draws back and turns to look at the Outsider. He’s not an arrogant, powerful god--not now, not standing there staring at his hands as if they’re a stranger’s. He looks _ young _ . With a vague pang of guilt for forgetting, Corvo remembers that the Outsider was only fifteen years old when he became a god in truth. Infinitely old, perpetually young. What kind of existence is that?

He doesn’t know what to say, if there is anything to say at all. And Corvo isn’t always good with words. He prefers deeds. And the Outsider likes best to be surprised. So carefully, as if he could frighten the Outsider away with a wrong move, Corvo pulls the god into an embrace. 

Corvo expects the Outsider to push him away. He doesn’t expect the Outsider to collapse, caving in on him like a sinking ship. His hands on Corvo’s chest, fingers crumpled in the fabric of his shirt. His face in the crook of Corvo’s neck, his whole body folded up against Corvo’s. He’s still so cold in Corvo’s arms, freezing as the northern sea, and so  _ small _ . Like a beached whale, a leviathan brought to earth. 

His slim shoulders tremble and his breathing is harsh. He’s  _ crying _ .

There aren’t any rules for this, in the game they’ve been playing. The Outsider always has a comic remark, a sly aside, a faint glare waiting in the wings. He’s quite capable of irritation, delight, even rage, though his reactions are always blunted and dull, hidden behind the power of the Leviathan. He doesn’t do  _ this _ .

Corvo doesn’t even know how to help. 

He’s never been good at playing the role of comforter. He hunts down would-be assassins; he stands guard against the machinations of the Abbey; he watches over Dunwall Tower at night. He is the Royal Protector, the bulwark against anyone who would threaten the stability of the Empire or the lives of his dear ones. If the Outsider were confronted with someone bent on deicide or some other danger, Corvo would know what to do. This is beyond him. 

They end up on the floor, sitting beside the shrine. Though the Outsider has recovered his composure, he hasn’t let go of Corvo. Neither of them speak. They’ve been in a position like this before--the Outsider between Corvo’s legs, Corvo holding the Outsider tight against him--but never quite like this. This isn’t worship, or whatever had passed for affection before this. It’s more than that.

“I’m a poor excuse for a god,” the Outsider says after a while, audibly bitter. 

The shrine presses a sharp edge into his back when Corvo shrugs. “You’re the only god we’ve got. I’m fairly sure that means you decide what’s godly or not.”

“Human reasoning. It’s not that easy.” Against his chest, the Outsider shifts, a gesture of discomfort that Corvo is fairly sure was made for his benefit alone.  _ Or _ , he dares to think, it’s a genuine expression of nerves that the Outsider feels safe enough to display for Corvo. 

Still expecting the Outsider to simply disappear and leave him holding nothing but shadows, Corvo runs a soothing hand down the Outsider’s back. He doesn’t reply. It probably isn’t that easy. He thinks that, if he asked now, the Outsider would explain. 

The Outsider draws back and looks at Corvo. “This changes nothing.”

“I didn’t expect that it would,” Corvo says. 

“I can’t have favorites,” the Outsider repeats. He reaches up and touches Corvo’s face, tracing his brows, his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose, as if he’s trying to memorize it. 

“I can,” Corvo says. 

Slowly, the Outsider blinks. And then he smiles, small and perhaps even sad. His black eyes do not reflect the candlelight. Yet Corvo sees his own reflection there, as if he’s looking into a dark mirror. “I see,” he says. 

There is a moment where Corvo wishes that his throat didn’t close around certain words, that he was the kind of man with the courage to confess poetry to his paramour. He thinks frantically of what words he might say. But he doesn’t have them. He never even had them with Jessamine; he cannot express his adoration of his own  _ daughter _ except in action. Now, even with a god in his arms, Corvo still can’t say anything. 

He sees the same struggle in the Outsider’s stillness, feels it in the cold fingertips that rest now on Corvo’s cheek, senses it in the painless scorching heat of his Mark on Corvo’s hand. The Outsider is absolutely expressionless, as dispassionate as the sea. There are no tear tracks on his face, no signal that mere minutes ago he was as lost and frightened as any human has ever been.

What a fine pair they make. 

“I will not abandon you again,” the Outsider says at last. Corvo thinks he might be able to hear all the things that he isn’t saying, in the eerie echo of whale-song that always lurks just behind his too-human voice. “I could not leave you if I tried, my dear Corvo.”

And in an instant the candles go out. The Outsider is gone and Corvo is alone in the dark. 

No, he thinks, as he rises and gathers himself together. He’s not alone. He suspects that he will never truly be alone again. The Mark burns, as if in affirmation. 

Corvo kisses it. 


End file.
